1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a method and an apparatus for displaying contact information based on an image embedded with the contact information.
2. Description of the Related Art
A typical communication device displays contact information, for example, names, phone numbers, e-mail addresses, and mailing addresses, to a user as a type of list. The user then searches for desired contact information displayed in the list. However, when the user uses the typical communication device, it can be confusing when the same name is displayed more than once in the contact list. Further, when the user forgets the contact name displayed in the contact list, the user cannot successfully contact the person.
Additionally, it is also common for a communication device to include a camera or at least photo viewer application. As such, images saved in a user device often include tags that identify the people in the images. However, these images do not include contact information and do not involve any relevance to contacting a person. Thus, the user of the communication device cannot search a corresponding contact manner or contact information based on the displayed image.
The contact image can be formed in a general image format, for example, as .bmp, .jpg, .png, .gif, .tga, and .tiff. When browsing the general image, the user cannot obtain the contact information corresponding to the image. That is, even when the user browses the image, the user cannot confirm the corresponding contact information because the corresponding image does not include the contact information.
In a conventional list-based contact information displaying method, the user cannot intuitively confirm the contact information corresponding to the contact image (for example, face or character image of a server or the other party). Accordingly, the user cannot communicate with the server or the other party using the contact image not including the contact information.
As a result, according to the conventional list-based contact information displaying method, since the contact image does not include the contact information and the user cannot intuitively see the contact information, the user cannot intuitively search for the contact information through the contact image and a separate manipulation is required to search for the contact information.